ReviewReviewed Work(s) The Case for Islamo-Christian Civ.docx

Review
Reviewed Work(s): The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization
by Richard W. Bulliet
Review by: Johannes J. G. Jansen
Source: The International History Review, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Dec.,
2005), pp. 931-932
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40109739
Accessed: 04-09-2016 18:14 UTC
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Richard W. Bulliet. The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization.
New York:
Columbia University Press, 2004. Pp. viii, 187. $24.50 (us).
Reviews of Books 931
Being siblings or even twins does not always guarantee
fraternal harmony and
co-operation. Yet this is what Richard W. Bulliet appears to
suggest in his new
book that sets out to clarify the relations between the Islamic
world on the one
hand, and the United States and Europe on the other. With
great scholarship and
vision, he demonstrates a number of socio-religious similarities
and historical
parallels between these two worlds that nowadays so often
seem to be at war with
one another. According to Bulliet, the similarities between the
two civilizations
justify calling them 'twins' or 'siblings', and he introduces, for
both of them, the
term 'Islamo-Christian civilization', in the singular: 'The
historical development of
Western Christendom and Islam parallel each other so closely
that the two faith
communities can best be thought of as two versions of a
common socio-religious

system' (p. 16).
In spite of his great scholarship, Bulliet here seems to have
overlooked a num-
ber of well-known and almost proverbial fratricides. Cain
murdered his brother
Abel; the brothers Romulus and Remus founded Rome together,
perhaps in 753
bc, but Romulus killed Remus. Caliph Amin was killed in ad
809 by the armies of
his brother, Caliph Al-Ma'mun. Being brothers does not
preclude murder or the
use of fatal force. So even if Bulliet is right about the
consanguinity of Islam and
the West (and he probably is), this does not necessarily make
the world a safer
place. After all, the political systems of the former Soviet
Union and the United
States are both the offspring of the Enlightenment;
nevertheless, during the cold
war years these two systems made spirited attempts to put an
end to each other.
Bulliet is concerned about the present enmity between the West
and the rest,
and he abhors the term 'clash of civilizations', introduced by
Bernard Lewis and
popularized by Samuel Huntington. Bulliet's concern is genuine
and should be
shared, but it should not make us forget that the great majority
of the inhabitants of

the Middle East do see the present conflicts as a 'clash of
civilizations'. Western
assurances that it cannot possibly be so, as Western civilization
is open to all, ir-
respective of religion or creed, are frequent; however, these
assurances are not
generally seen as believable by people in the Middle East.
Bulliet, among many other things, argues that 'a comparable
decline in religious
naming took place in Massachusetts, Turkey, and Iran' (tables
on pp. 76-9). This,
according to him, 'indicates] an ebbing of religion as a focus of
public life' (p. 75).
However, in the case of Massachusetts, only Old Testament
names are seen as
religious names (p. 164), names like Ezekiel, Jehoshaphat, and
Jeremiah. What is
wrong with Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, or Joseph,
as religious names
from a Christian viewpoint? Or would the addition to the tables
of these names
have made the statistical results less significant or similar to
each other?
For Muslim religious names in Turkey, Bulliet selected only
Mehmet, Ahmet,
xxvii. 4: December 2005

2016 18:14:11 UTC
932 The International History Review
and Ali, whereas if one chooses these three names, Mustafa,
another common ap-
pellation of the Prophet Muhammad, should definitely have
been included as well.
Also, it is difficult to see why the many names consisting of
Abd ('servant')
followed by one of the names of God (names like Abd al-
Hamid) should not be
seen as Islamic religious names. It is hard to say whether such
imperfections (if
they are imperfections) invalidate Bulliet's conclusions, but
they do not make his
case more convincing.
Many readers will take offence at a passage on page 45: 'The
case for Islamo-
Christian civilization rests more immediately on the need of all
Americans to find
common ground with our Muslim diaspora communities at a
time when suspicion,
fear, draconian government action, and demagoguery
increasingly threaten to
divide us.' This list is strangely incomplete. 'Terrorism
committed in the name of
Islam by a number of ruthless men' should have been included

in this enumeration
of divisive factors that threaten harmonious coexistence of
Muslims and non-
Muslims. After the attack on the United States in September
2001, and the assas-
sination of Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam by a Dutch-Moroccan
Muslim in
November 2004, for example, this should have been obvious.
Nevertheless, Bulliet offers rare insights in the Islamic and the
(post)-Christian
worlds for which his readers will be thankful.
University of Utrecht Johannes I. G. I ansen
P. W. Singer. Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized
Military Industry.
Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003. Pp. xi, 330.
$39.95 (us).
The end of the cold war in the early 1990s saw the emergence
of a new kind of
military actor in international politics: transnational
corporations that provide a
range of military services to a range of clients, including
governments, non-govern-
mental organizations, and inter-governmental organizations.
The rise of these
firms generated a considerable literature, including William
Reno's Warlord Pol-
itics and African States (1998); The Privatisation of Security in

Africa, ed. Greg
Mills and John Stremlau (1999); and James R. Davis's Fortune's
Warriors: Private
Armies and the New World Order (2000).
However, there has never been agreement on what to call these
firms. Often
they are simply dismissed as 'mercenaries' or 'corporate dogs of
war', particularly
in the popular press, even though these companies are
fundamentally unlike trad-
itional mercenaries. According to the Geneva Convention's
cumbersome cumula-
tive definition, a mercenary is a person who
is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an
armed conflict; does, in fact,
take part in the hostilities; is motivated to take part in the
hostilities essentially by the desire
for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a
party to the conflict, material
compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid
to combatants of similar
xxvii. 4: December 2005
2016 18:14:11 UTC
Contents931932Issue Table of ContentsThe International
History Review, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Dec., 2005), pp. 709-943Front
MatterMoney in Wartime: France's Financial Preparations for
the Two World Wars [pp. 709-753]Tiptoeing along the

Apartheid Tightrope: The United States, South Africa, and the
United Nations in 1952 [pp. 754-779]The Cultural Revolution
of the Long Sixties: Voices of Reaction, Protest, and
Permeation [pp. 780-806]Review ArticlesReview: Persia and the
Greeks: Failure of an Empire [pp. 807-812]Review: Four
Approaches to Harry S. Truman [pp. 813-818]Reviews of
BooksReview: untitled [pp. 819-820]Review: untitled [pp. 820-
821]Review: untitled [pp. 822-823]Review: untitled [pp. 823-

937]Review: untitled [pp. 937-938]Collected Essays [pp. 939-
943]Back Matter

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